After some casting about, as it were, I settle on the 300-square-mile High Lonesome Ranch on the western slope of the Rockies in DeBeque, Colorado.

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Attention focused on a small town on the western slope of the Rockies where a company said they could get oil from the rocks.

NPR: Industry Seeks to Extract Oil from Rocky Mountain Shale

If I had to live east of the Mississippi, I might choose Knoxville, which lies on the western slope of the Appalachians and resembles the Sierra Nevada foothills.

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Ten years ago, apart from a few grazing goats and donkeys, no one paid much attention to the western slope of the island, where nine of the project's 12 finished houses dot the landscape.

WSJ: Community by Design | Architecture

In Slope County, in south-western North Dakota, amid the vast and rugged Badlands, cattle ranchers face a similar collection of troubles.

ECONOMIST: Can the rules be bent just enough to keep them alive?

They also propose more pipelines to move natural gas into the lower 48 from Alaska's North Slope, and would move to hold down price increases that may be put in place by Western electricity providers.

CNN: Bush ready to release 'optimistic' energy plan

It markets its refined products primarily in the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountain region, which encompasses eastern Colorado (including Denver), eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

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